休むべき宿を思へば中空の
旅も何にか苦しかるべき
旅も何にか苦しかるべき
- Roma-ji
-
Yasumu beki yado o omoeba nakazora no tabi mo nani ni ka kurushikaru beki
- English Translation
-
When I think upon
the lodging where I may rest,
then even a journey
half done, how could it ever
be a hardship at all?
- Meaning
- When I think of the lodging where I may rest, how could even a journey left halfway be any hardship?
- Commentary
-
Miscellaneous Poems 881
Headnote: "When, within the fifty days after someone's death, the Lotus Sutra was copied chapter by chapter in dedication: The Parable of the Conjured City"
When the Lotus Sutra was copied chapter by chapter and dedicated within fifty days of someone's death, the poet took the chapter on the Parable of the Conjured City and composed this. The chapter tells how a guide, seeing his party worn out on a hard road to a place of treasure, conjured a phantom city by his powers to let them rest and then go on. When I think of the lodging where I may rest, even a journey left halfway is no hardship, he says.
First line, “yasumu beki”: where one can rest.
Second line, “yado o omoeba”: yado is the conjured city of the parable.
Third line, “nakazora no”: midway on the road, half done.
Fourth line, “tabi mo nani ni ka”: ka is a rhetorical binding particle answered by beki.
Fifth line, “kurushikaru beki”: how could it be hard? It could not.
- Author
- Saigyō
- Source
- Sankashu
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